Vault Law 100

Vault’s ranking of the most prestigious law firms in the country based on the assessments of lawyers at peer firms. This year nearly 18,000 associates rated the reputations of firms other than their own.

Survey Methodology

How does Vault come up with its list of the Top 100 firms in the
country? The first step is to compile a list of the most renowned
law firms in the land by reviewing the feedback we receive from
previous surveys, consulting our previous lists, poring over legal
newspapers, talking to lawyers in the field and checking out other
published rankings. We then asked these top firms to distribute a
password-protected online survey to their associates. This year,
nearly 17,000 attorneys returned anonymous surveys to Vault.
Associates from all over the country and the world responded. We
heard from lawyers in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palo
Alto, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, Washington,
D.C., Miami, Cleveland, Seattle, Orlando, Phoenix and Atlanta, plus
many other domestic as well as international locations. The online
survey asked attorneys to score each of the law firms on a scale of
1 to 10 based on how prestigious it is to work for the firm.
Associates were asked to ignore any firm with which they were
unfamiliar and were not allowed to rank their own firm.

We collected all the surveys and averaged the score for each
firm. The firms were then ranked in order, starting with the
highest average prestige score as No. 1 on down to determine the
Vault Top 100. Remember that in the Top 100, Vault is not assessing
firms by profit, size, lifestyle, number of deals or quality of
service; we are ranking the most prestigious law firms based on the
perceptions of currently practicing lawyers at peer firms.

Many thanks to the nearly 17,000 survey respondents for your
insights!